Walk Alongside Me for a Bit…

Morning Trip

“Journeys bring power and love
Back into you. If you can’t go somewhere,
Move in the passageways of the self.
They are like shafts of light,
Always changing, and you change
When you explore them.”
–Rumi

“Perfectionism never happens in a vacuum. It touches everyone around us. We pass it down to our children, we infect our workplace with impossible expectations, and it’s suffocating for our friends and families. Thankfully, compassion also spreads quickly. When we’re kind to ourselves, we create a reservoir of compassion that we can extend to others. Our children learn how to be self-compassionate by watching us, and the people around us feel free to be authentic and connected.”
–Brene Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection

“The truth is that we’re always in some kind of in-between state, always in process. We never fully arrive. When we’re present with the dynamic quality of our lives, we’re also present with impermanence, uncertainty, and change. If we can stay present, then we might finally get that there’s no security or certainty in the objects of our pleasure or the objects of our pain, no security or certainty in winning or losing, in compliments or criticism, in good reputation or bad–no security or certainty ever in anything that’s fleeting, that’s subject to change.”
–Pema Chodron

“The kinds of stories we tell about ourselves can also vary greatly across cultures. Along some dimensions, Asians, on average, do less self-inflating than Westerners; along other dimensions–notably ‘collectivist’ virtues, such as loyalty to the group–Asians tend to do more self-inflating than Westerners. Still, the basic pattern of self-inflation holds worldwide, and that’s particularly true when it comes to ethical virtues such as fairness; on average, people think they’re morally above average. This is an especially important piece of self-flattery, because it helps fuel the self-righteousness that starts and sustains conflicts, ranging from quarrels to wars.”
–Robert Wright, Why Buddhism Is True

“Empaths naturally struggle to accept the fact that not every issue, conflict, question, or dilemma can be resolved. One strong empathic lesson is to come to terms with the reality that not everything has an attainable resolution or concrete answer, especially in the immediate sense. If the resolution or closure of an issue is truly out of one’s own hands, nothing more can be done and that’s just how it’ll have to be. Not every issue, conflict, or misunderstanding can be resolved; sometimes the best choice is moving on…”
–Raven Digitalis, Esoteric Empathy

“She spends half her time making herself attractive to men, and the other half trying to divine which of the attracted are serious enough to marry her, and which wish to ram her against the nearest wall and jab into her recklessly.”
–Maya Angelou

Posts navigation

“At such moments, courage is necessary,” Mr. Obama said. “We need courage to stand up to hate, not just in others, but in ourselves. At such moments, we need the courage to stand up to dogma, not just in others, but in ourselves.”
–Barack Obama

Tea Time

“There is a fever that overcomes a book-lover who has limited time to spend on Ober’s island. A fever to read. Or at least to open the books. There is no question of finishing or even delving deeply. I have only days. Among the books, I feel what is almost a low swell of grief, a panic.”
— Louise Erdrich, Books and Islands in Ojibway Country

“Books are our guardians of memory, tutors in language, pathways to reason, and our golden gate to the royal road of imagination. Books take us to new places where boundaries are not set by someone else’s pictures on a television screen and our thoughts are not drowned out by sounds on a boom box. Books help us pose the unimagined question and to accept the unwelcome answer. Books convince rather than coerce. They are oases of coherence where things are put together rather than just taken apart. Good books take us away from the bumper cars of emotion and polemics in the media into trains of thought that can lead us into places we might not otherwise ever discover.

Reading a book can become a private conversation with someone from a time and place other than our own — a voyage into both mastery and mystery.”
— John H. Billington, “The Modern Library and Global Democracy,” from The Meaning of the Library; ed. Alice Crawford